War of The Worldviews by Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow - Excerpt

Copyright © 2011 by Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow
All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Harmony Books is a registered trademark and the Harmony Books colophon is

a trademark of Random House, Inc.
The Standard Model Lagrangian Copyright © 2007 W. N. Cottingham

and D. A. Greenwood. Reprinted with the permission of
Cambridge University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chopra, Deepak.
War of the worldviews : science vs. spirituality / by
Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Religion and science. I. Mlodinow, Leonard, 1954– II. Title.
BL240.3.C46 2011
201'.65—dc22 2011010591
ISBN 978-0-307-88688-0
eISBN 978-0-307-88690-3
Printed in the United States of America
Book design: Lauren Dong

Jacket design: Daniel Rembert
Jacket photographs: (burst) Dimitri Vervitsioris/Getty Images,
(sun) Stephen Coburn/Bigstock.com
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
First Edition
WHAT'S YOUR WORLD VIEW? JOIN THE DEBATE!

Visit Deepak Chopra's Facebook page and follow him on Twitter.
Visit Leonard Mlodinow's Facebook page and follow him on Twitter.
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Fo rewo rd
N
othing is more mysterious than another person’s worldview.
Each of us has one. We believe that our worldview expresses
reality. The Native Americans of the Southwest traveled
hundreds of miles to hunt buffalo but never ate fish from their local
streams. In their worldview, it was real that fish were the spirits of
departed ancestors. In the Old Testament it was real that animal sac-
rifices appeased God’s wrath; to the everyday Roman it was real that
the future could be foretold in the entrails of a chicken. To the ancient
Greeks it was real that a moral individual could keep slaves and that
there existed many gods, of love and beauty, war, the underworld, the
hunt, the harvest, the sea.
What happens, then, when two worldviews clash? In 399 BCE
three Athenian citizens accused Socrates of refusing to recognize
the traditional gods and introducing new divinities instead (he was
also accused of corrupting their youth). The penalty for this clash of
worldviews, or gods, was death. During his trial Socrates refused to
back down or to flee from a certain verdict of guilty. According to
Plato, he said, “So long as I draw breath and have my faculties, I shall
never stop practicing philosophy.” Unfortunately, in many parts of
the world today, a clash of worldviews is still met with violence and
death.
This book is about a clash of worldviews, but no blows were ex-
changed. The book came about when two strangers met at a televised
debate on “the future of God.” The setting was an auditorium at

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xviii Foreword
the California Institute of Technology, and the audience was com-

posed of many scientists and students, but also of laypeople, includ-
ing Deepak’s fans from the surrounding community. Each of them
brought his or her own personal beliefs— no doubt some of them
were religious— but they also brought their own worldview, which
runs much deeper than belief.
In the Caltech debate Deepak served as the defender of a world-
view broadly known as spiritual. Since the ideas of physics became an
issue, during the question-and-answer period Deepak asked, “Is there
a physicist in the house?” Neither Leonard nor anyone else answered.
But after the debate, the moderator, who recognized Leonard as a
physicist, pulled him out of the audience to ask Deepak a question.
Leonard instead offered to teach him about quantum physics. Deepak
accepted— to a mixture of laughter and applause— and as we started
to communicate, we found ourselves strongly disagreeing about our
worldviews. Realizing the depth of our clash, we decided to have it
out in this book.
Science has set humanity on a path to unravel the secrets of nature,
harness natural forces, and develop new technologies, using reason
and observation instead of emotional bias as a tool for uncovering the
truth of things. Spirituality looks toward an invisible, transcendent
realm discovered within the self. Science explores the world as it is
offered to the five senses and the brain, while spirituality considers
the universe to be purposeful and imbued with meaning. In Deepak’s
view, the great challenge for spirituality is to offer something that sci-
ence cannot provide— in particular, answers that lie in the realm of
consciousness.
Which worldview is right? Does science describe the universe, or
do ancient teachings like meditation unravel mysteries that are beyond
the worldview of science? To find out, this book explores the clash of
worldviews on three levels: the cosmos, or physical universe; life; and
the human brain. Finally, we also explore the ultimate mystery, God.
In “Cosmos” we argue about where the universe came from, its na-
ture, and where it is going. In “Life” we debate evolution, genetics,

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Foreword xix
and the origin of life. “Mind and Brain” addresses neuroscience and
raises all the issues of mind and body. And “God” refers not only to a
presiding deity but also to the broader concept of a divine presence in
our universe.
This book covers eighteen topics in total, with essays from both
authors. Each of us told his side of the story, one topic at a time, but
whoever came second on any given topic did so with the other’s text
in hand, feeling free to present a rebuttal. Since rebuttals tend to per-
suade audiences, we tried to be as fair as possible about who got that
advantage.
Each of us believes deeply in the worldview he represents. We have
written fiercely but respectfully to define the truth as we see it. No
one can ignore the question of how to perceive the world. The best we
can do— writers and readers alike— is to leap into the fray. What else
could be more important?
Deepak Chopra
Leonard Mlodinow

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PA R T O N E
THE WAR

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1
Perspectives

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The Spiritual Perspective
DEEPAK
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks within, awakens.

—Carl Jung
I
f it is going to win the struggle for the future, spirituality must first
overcome a major disadvantage. In the popular imagination, science
long ago discredited religion. Facts replaced faith. Superstition was
gradually vanquished. That’s why Darwin’s explanation of man’s de-
scent from lower primates prevails over Genesis and why we look to
the Big Bang as the source of the cosmos rather than to a creation
myth populated by one or more gods.
So it’s important to begin by saying that religion isn’t the same as
spirituality— far from it. Even God isn’t the same as spirituality. Orga-
nized religion may have discredited itself, but spirituality has suffered
no such defeat. Thousands of years ago, in cultures across the globe,
inspired spiritual teachers such as the Buddha, Jesus, and Lao-tzu pro-
posed profound views of life. They taught that a transcendent domain
resides beyond the everyday world of pain and struggle. Although the
eye beholds rocks, mountains, trees, and sky, this is only a veil drawn
over a vast, mysterious, unseen reality. Beyond the reach of the five
senses lies an invisible realm of infinite possibility, and the key to un-
folding its potential is consciousness. Go within, the sages and seers
declared, and you will find the true source of everything: your own
awareness.

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Perspectives 5
It was this tremendous promise that religion failed to deliver on.

The reasons don’t concern us here, because this is a book about the fu-
ture. It’s enough to say that if the kingdom of God is within, as Christ
declared, if nirvana means freedom from all suffering, as the Buddha
taught, and if knowledge of the cosmos is locked inside the human
mind, as the ancient rishis, or sages, of India proposed, we cannot look
around today and say that those teachings bore fruit. Increasingly few
people worship in the old ways around the world, and even as their
elders lament this decline, those who have walked away from religion
no longer even need an excuse. Science long ago showed us a brave
new world that requires no faith in an invisible realm.
The real issue is knowledge and how you attain it. Jesus and the
Buddha had no doubt that they were describing reality from a posi-
tion of true knowledge. After more than two thousand years, we think
we know better.
Science celebrates its triumphs, which are many, and excuses its
catastrophes, which are also numerous— and growing. The atomic
bomb delivered us into an age of mass destruction that brings night
terrors just to contemplate. The environment has been disastrously
disrupted by emissions spewing from the machines that technology
gives us to make life better. Yet supporters of science shrug off these
threats as either side effects or failures of social policy. Morality, we
are told, isn’t the responsibility of science. But if you look deeper, sci-
ence has run into the same problem as religion. Religion lost sight of
humility before God, and science lost its sense of awe, increasingly
seeing Nature as a force to be opposed and conquered, its secrets
stripped bare for the benefit of humankind. Now we are paying the
price. When asked if Homo sapiens is in danger of extinction, some sci-
entists offer hope that within a few hundred years space travel will be
advanced enough to let us abandon the planetary nest we are fouling.
Off we go to spoil other worlds!
We all know what’s at stake: the foreseeable future looms grimly
over us. The standard solution for our present woes is all too famil-
iar. Science will rescue us with new technology— for restoring the

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6 THE WAR
environment, replacing fossil fuels, curing AIDS and cancer, and

ending the threat of famine. Name your malady and there’s someone
to tell you that a scientific solution is just around the corner. But isn’t
science promising to rescue us from itself? And why is that a promise
we should trust? The worldview that triumphed over religion, and
that looks upon life as essentially materialistic, has set us on a path
that leads to a dead end. Literally.
Even if we miraculously eliminated disastrous pollution and waste,
coming generations will still have no model for the good life except
the one that has failed us: endless consumption, exploitation of natu-
ral resources, and the diabolical creativity of warfare. As a young Chi-
nese student bitterly commented about the West, “You ate the whole
banquet. Now you give us coffee and dessert, but tell us to pay for the
entire meal.”
Religion cannot resolve this dilemma; it has had its chances al-
ready. But spirituality can. We need to go back to the source of re-
ligion. That source isn’t God. It’s consciousness. The great teachers
who lived millennia ago offered something more radical than belief
in a higher power. They offered a way of viewing reality that begins
not with outside facts and a limited physical existence, but with inner
wisdom and access to unbounded awareness. The irony is that Jesus,
the Buddha, and the other enlightened sages were scientists, too. They
had a way of uncovering knowledge that runs exactly parallel to mod-
ern science. First came a hypothesis, an idea that needed testing. Next
came experimentation to see if the hypothesis was true. Finally came
peer review, offering the new findings to other researchers and asking
them to reproduce the same breakthrough.
The spiritual hypothesis that was put forward thousands of years
ago has three parts:
1. There is an unseen reality that is the source of all visible things.

2. This unseen reality is knowable through our own awareness.
3. Intelligence, creativity, and organizing power are embedded in
the cosmos.

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Perspectives 7
This trio of ideas is like the Platonic values in Greek philosophy, which
tell us that love, truth, order, and reason shape human existence from
a higher reality. The difference is that even more ancient philosophies,
with roots going back five thousand years, tell us that higher reality is
with us right here and now.
In the following pages, as Leonard and I debate the great questions
of human existence, my role is to offer spiritual answers— not as a
priest or a practitioner of any particular faith, but as a researcher in
consciousness. This runs the risk, I know, of alienating devout believ-
ers, the many millions of people in every faith for whom God is very
personal. But the world’s wisdom traditions did not exclude a personal
God (to be candid, I was not taught as a child to worship one, but my
mother did, praying at a temple to Rama every day of her life). At the
same time, wisdom traditions all included an impersonal God who
permeates every atom of the universe and every fiber of our being.
This distinction bothers those believers who want to cling to the one
and only true faith, whatever it may be for them. But an impersonal
God doesn’t need to be a threat.
Think of someone you love. Now think of love itself. The person
you love puts a face on love, yet surely you know that love existed
before this person was born and will survive after they pass away. In
that simple example lies the difference between the personal and the
impersonal God. As a believer you can put a face on God— that is a
matter of your own private choice— but I hope you see that if God
is everywhere, the divine qualities of love, mercy, compassion, justice,
and all the other attributes ascribed to God extend infinitely through-
out creation. Not surprisingly, this idea is a common thread in all
major religions. Higher consciousness allowed the great sages, saints,
and seers to attain a kind of knowledge that science feels threatened
by but that is completely valid. Our common understanding of con-
sciousness is too limited to do justice here.
If I asked you, “What are you conscious of right this minute?” you
would probably start by describing the room you’re in and the sights,
sounds, and smells surrounding you. On reflection you’d become

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8 THE WAR
aware of your mood, the sensations in your body, perhaps a hidden

worry or desire that lies deeper than superficial thoughts. But the
inner journey can go much deeper, taking you to a reality that isn’t
about objects “out there” or feelings and thoughts “in here.” Eventu-
ally those two worlds meld into one state of being that lies beyond the
limits of space-time, in a realm of infinite possibilities.
Now we face a contradiction, however. How can two realities that
are opposites (the way baking a loaf of bread is the opposite of dream-
ing about a loaf of bread) turn out to be the same? This improbable
vision is succinctly described in the Isha Upanishad, an ancient Indian
scripture. “That is complete, and this is also complete. This totality has
been projected from that totality. When this wholeness merges in that
wholeness, all that remains is wholeness.” At first glance, this passage
seems like a riddle, but it can be deciphered by realizing that “that”
is the state of pure consciousness, while “this” is the visible universe.
Both are complete in themselves, as we know from science, which has
been satisfied for four centuries with exploring the visible universe.
But in the spiritual worldview a hidden wholeness underlies all of cre-
ation, and ultimately it is this invisible wholeness that matters most.
Spirituality has been around for many thousand years, and its re-
searchers were brilliant— the very Einsteins of consciousness. Anyone
can reproduce and verify their results, as with the principles of sci-
ence. More important, the future that spirituality promises— one of
wisdom, freedom, and fulfillment— hasn’t vanished as the age of faith
declined. Reality is reality. There is only one, and it’s permanent. This
means that at some point the inner and outer worlds must meet; we
won’t have to choose between them. That in itself will be a revolution-
ary discovery, since the dispute between science and religion has per-
suaded almost everyone that either you face reality and deal with the
tough questions of everyday life (science), or you passively retreat and
contemplate a realm beyond everyday life (religion).
This either/or choice was forced on us when religion failed to de-
liver on its promises. But spirituality, the deeper source of religion,
hasn’t failed and is ready to meet science face-to-face, offering answers

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Perspectives 9
consistent with the most advanced scientific theories. Human con-

sciousness created science, which ironically is now moving to exclude
consciousness, its very creator! Surely this would leave us with worse
than an orphaned and shrunken science— we’d inhabit an impover-
ished world.
It has already arrived. We live in a time of rude atheism, whose
proponents deride religion as superstition, illusion, and a hoax. But
their real target isn’t religion; it’s the inner journey. I am less con-
cerned with attacks on God than I am with a far more insidious dan-
ger: the superstition of materialism. To scientific atheists, reality must
be external; otherwise their whole approach falls apart. If the physical
world is all that exists, science is right to mine it for data.
But here the superstition of materialism breaks down. Our five
senses encourage us to accept that there are objects “out there,” forests
and rivers, atoms and quarks. However, at the frontiers of physics,
where Nature becomes very small, matter breaks down and then van-
ishes. Here, the act of measuring changes what we see; every observer
turns out to be woven into what he observes. This is the universe al-
ready known to spirituality, where passive observation gives way to
active participation, and we discover that we are part of the fabric of
creation. The result is enormous power and freedom.
Science has never achieved pure objectivity, and it never will.
To deny the worth of subjective experience is to dismiss most of what
makes life worth living: love, trust, faith, beauty, awe, wonder, com-
passion, truth, the arts, morality, and the mind itself. The field of neu-
roscience has largely accepted that the mind doesn’t exist but is merely
a by-product of the brain. The brain (a “computer made of meat,”
as Marvin Minsky, an expert in artificial intelligence, dubbed it) is
our master, chemically deciding how we feel, genetically determin-
ing how we grow, live, and die. This picture isn’t acceptable to me,
because in dismissing the mind we eliminate our portal to knowledge
and insight.
As Leonard and I debate the big mysteries, the great sages and seers
remind us that there is only one question: What is reality? Is it the

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10 THE WAR
result of natural laws rigorously operating through cause and effect,

or is it something else? There is good reason for our worldviews to
be at war. Either reality is bounded by the visible universe, or it isn’t.
Either the cosmos was created from an empty, meaningless void, or
it wasn’t. Until you understand the nature of reality, you are like one
of the fabled six blind men trying to describe an elephant by holding
on to just one of its parts. The one who has hold of the leg says, “An
elephant is much like a tree.” The one who has hold of the trunk says,
“An elephant is much like a snake.” And so on.
The childhood fable about the blind men and the elephant is ac-
tually an allegory from ancient India. The six blind men are the five
senses plus the rational mind. The elephant is Brahman, the totality
of all that exists. On the surface the fable is pessimistic: if all you pos-
sess is your five senses and your rational mind, you’ll never see the
elephant. But there is a hidden message so obvious that many people
miss it. The elephant exists. It was there before us, patiently waiting to
be known. It is the deeper truth of unified reality.
Just because religion didn’t succeed doesn’t mean that a new spiri-
tuality, based on consciousness, won’t. We need to see the truth, and
in the process we will awaken the profound powers that were prom-
ised to us thousands of years ago. Time awaits. The future depends on
the choice we make today.

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The Scientific Perspective
LEONARD
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the

more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity
does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and
blind faith, but through the striving after rational knowledge.
—Albert Einstein
C
hildren come into the world believing it all revolves around
them, and so did humanity. People have always been anxious
to understand their universe, but for most of human history
we hadn’t yet developed the means. Since we are proactive and imagi-
native animals, we didn’t let the lack of tools stop us. We simply ap-
plied our imagination to form compelling pictures. These pictures
were not based on reality, but were created to serve our needs. We
would all like to be immortal. We’d like to believe that good triumphs
over evil, that a greater power watches over us, that we are part of
something bigger, that we have been put here for a reason. We’d like
to believe that our lives have an intrinsic meaning. Ancient concepts
of the universe comforted us by affirming these desires. Where did the
universe come from? Where did life come from? Where did people
come from? The legends and theologies of the past assured us that we
were created by God, and that our Earth was the center of everything.
Today science can answer many of the most fundamental ques-
tions of existence. Science’s answers spring from observation and

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12 THE WAR
experiment rather than from human bias or desire. Science offers an-
swers in harmony with nature as it is, rather than nature as we’d like
it to be.
The universe is an awe-inspiring place, especially for those who
know something about it. The more we learn, the more astonishing
it seems. Newton said that if he saw further it was because he stood
on the shoulders of giants. Today we can all stand on the shoulders
of scientists and see deep and amazing truths about the universe and
our place in it. We can understand how we and our Earth are natural
phenomena that arise from the laws of physics. Our ancestors viewed
the night sky with a sense of wonder, but to see stars that explode in
seconds and shine with more light than entire galaxies brings a new
dimension to the awe. In our day a scientist can turn her telescope to
observe an Earthlike planet trillions of miles away, or study a spec-
tacular internal universe in which a million million atoms conspire
to create a tiny freckle. We know now that our Earth is one world
among many and that our species arose from other species (whose
members we may not wish to invite into our living rooms but who are
our ancestors nonetheless). Science has revealed a universe that is vast,
ancient, violent, strange, and beautiful, a universe of almost infinite
variety and possibility, one in which time can end in a black hole, and
conscious beings can evolve from a soup of minerals. In such a uni-
verse it can seem that people are insignificant, but what is significant
and profound is that we, ensembles of almost uncountable numbers
of unthinking atoms, can become aware, and understand our origins
and the nature of the cosmos in which we live.
Deepak feels that scientific explanations are sterile and reductive,
diminishing humankind to a mere collection of atoms, no different in
kind from any other object in the universe. But scientific knowledge
does not diminish our humanity any more than the knowledge that
our country is one among many diminishes our appreciation of our
native culture. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. Emotion,
intuition, adherence to authority— traits that drive the belief in reli-
gious and mystical explanation— are traits that can be found in other

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Perspectives 13
primates, and even in lower animals. But orangutans cannot reason

about the angles in triangles, and macaque monkeys do not look to
the heavens and wonder why the planets follow elliptical paths. It is
only humans who can engage in the wondrous processes of reason and
thought called science, only humans who can understand themselves
and how their planet got here, and only humans who could discover
the atoms that form us.
The triumph of humanity is our capacity to understand. It is our
comprehension of the cosmos, our insight into where we came from,
our vision of the place we occupy in the universe, that sets us apart.
A by-product of this scientific understanding is the power to harness
nature for our benefit, or, it is true, to employ it to our detriment. The
particular ethical and moral choices people make depend on human
nature, and human culture. People dropped boulders on their enemies
long before they understood the law of gravity. And they spewed filth
into the skies long before they understood the thermodynamics of
burning coal.
Promoting good and avoiding evil is the charge of organized reli-
gion and spirituality. It is those enterprises— not science— that have
often failed to deliver on their promise. Eastern religions did not pre-
vent a history of brutal warfare in Asia, nor did Western religions pac-
ify Europe. In fact, more people have been slaughtered in the name
of religion than by all the atomic weapons made possible by modern
physics. From the Crusades to the Holocaust, in addition to being
a tool of goodness and love, religion has been employed as a tool of
hatred. Deepak’s universalist and peaceful approach to spirituality is
therefore a welcome alternative. But Deepak’s metaphysics goes be-
yond spiritual guidance to offer views on the nature of the universe.
Deepak’s belief that the universe is purposeful and imbued with love
may be attractive, but is it correct?
Deepak criticizes science for its vision of life as “essentially ma-
terialistic.” By materialistic, Deepak does not mean to suggest that
scientists are focused only on things and the desire to possess them,
but that scientists deal only with phenomena we can see, hear, smell,

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14 THE WAR
detect with instruments, or measure with numbers. He contrasts the

visible, or detectable, universe studied by science with an implicitly
superior but invisible “realm of infinite possibility” that lies beyond
our senses, a “transcendent domain” that is the source of all visible
things. Deepak argues passionately that only by accepting this realm
can science grow beyond its limits and help save the world. But argu-
ing that such a realm can expand the limits of science, that it can help
humanity, or that ancient sages taught about it doesn’t make it true.
If you think you are eating a cheeseburger, and I tell you that in some
other unseen realm it is really a filet mignon, you’d want to know how
I know this, and what evidence supports my idea. Only those answers
can enable a belief to transcend wish fulfillment, so if Deepak is to be
convincing, those questions are the challenges he must address.
The real issue, as Deepak says, is knowledge and how you attain
it. Deepak criticizes science for denying “the worth of subjective ex-
perience.” But science wouldn’t have gotten very far if one scientist
described a helium atom as “pretty heavy” while another noted that “it
feels light to me.” Scientists employ precise objective measurements
and precise objective concepts for good reason, and the fact that they
seek to ensure that their measurements and concepts are not influ-
enced by “love, trust, faith, beauty, awe, wonder, compassion,” etc.,
does not mean that they dismiss the value of those qualities in other
areas of life.
Scientists are often guided by their intuition and subjective feel-
ings, but they recognize the need for another step: verification. Science
proceeds in a loop of observation, theory, and experiment. The loop is
repeated until the theory and the empirical evidence are in harmony.
But this method would fail if concepts were not precisely defined and
experiments were not rigorously controlled. These elements of the
scientific method are crucial, and it is they that determine the differ-
ence between good science and bad science, or between science and
pseudoscience. Deepak said Jesus was a scientist. Was he? He probably
did not gather a sample of the population and, after being insulted,
turn the other cheek to half of them, and lay out the other half with a

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Perspectives 15
solid right hook, then gather statistics on the efficacy of the different
approaches. It might seem silly that I object when Deepak calls Jesus
a scientist, but it introduces a theme— the use of terminology— that
will become important in more substantive contexts later in this book:
one must be careful when discussing scientific issues not to use terms
loosely. It is easy to use words imprecisely in an argument, but it is
also dangerous, because the substance of the argument often relies on
the nuances of those words.
I do not suggest that science is perfect. Deepak says that science
has never achieved pure objectivity, and he is right. For one, the con-
cepts employed in science are concepts conceived by the human brain.
Aliens with different brain structures, thought processes, and sense
organs might view matter in completely different, but equally valid,
ways. And if there is a certain kind of subjectivity to our concepts
and our theories, there is also subjectivity in our experiments. In fact,
experiments that have been done on experimenters show that there
is a tendency for scientists to see what they want to see, and to be
convinced by data they wish to find convincing. Yes, scientists, and
science, are fallible. Yet all these are reasons not to doubt the scientific
method, but to follow it as scrupulously as possible.
History shows that the scientific method works. Being only hu-
man, some scientists may at first resist new and revolutionary ideas,
but if a theory’s predictions are confirmed by experiment, the new
theory soon becomes mainstream. For example, in 1982, Robin War-
ren and Barry Marshall discovered the Helicobacter pylori bacteria, and
hypothesized that it causes ulcers. Their work was not well received
because at the time scientists firmly believed that stress and lifestyle
were the major causes of peptic ulcer disease. Yet further experiments
bore out their claims, and by 2005 it had been established that Heli-
cobacter pylori causes more than 90 percent of duodenal ulcers and up
to 80 percent of gastric ulcers, and Warren and Marshall were awarded
the Nobel Prize. Science would also embrace Deepak, if his claims
were true.
When theories that people are passionate about are brushed off by

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16 THE WAR
the science community, cries of closed-mindedness often emerge. But

the history of science shows that the real reason for the rejection of
theories is that they clash with observational evidence. In fact, some
very weird ideas, arising sometimes from very obscure and unex-
pected quarters—ideas like relativity and quantum uncertainty— have
quickly gained acceptance, despite challenging conventional thinking,
for just one reason: they passed their experimental tests. Proponents
of metaphysics and Deepak’s spirituality are far less open to revising
or expanding their worldviews to encompass new discoveries. Rather
than welcoming new truths, they often cling to ancient ideas, explana-
tions, and texts. If on occasion they turn to science in an attempt to
justify their traditional ideas, whenever it appears that science does not
support them they are quick to turn their backs on it. And when they
do employ scientific concepts, they use them so loosely that the mean-
ings are altered, with the result that the conclusions they come to are
not valid.
One can’t expect science to answer all the questions of the universe.
There may well be secrets of nature that will remain forever beyond
the outer limits of human intelligence. Other questions, such as those
regarding human aspirations and the meaning of our lives, are best
viewed from multiple perspectives, both scientific and spiritual. These
approaches can coexist and respect each other. The trouble arises when
religious and spiritual doctrine makes pronouncements about the
physical universe that contradict what we actually observe to be true.
To Deepak, the key to everything is the understanding of con-
sciousness. It is true that science has only begun to address that ques-
tion. How do those unthinking atoms we are made of conspire to
create love, pain, and joy? How does the brain create thought and
conscious experience? The brain contains more than a hundred bil-
lion neurons, roughly the number of stars in a galaxy, but the stars
hardly interact, while the average neuron is plugged into thousands of
others. That makes the human brain far more complex and difficult
to fathom than the universe of galaxies and stars, and is one reason
we have made great leaps in our understanding of the cosmos, while

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Perspectives 17
knowledge of ourselves proceeds at a relative crawl. Is that a sign that

our minds cannot be explained?
It is shortsighted to believe that because science today cannot ex-
plain consciousness, consciousness must lie beyond science’s reach.
But even if the origin of consciousness is too complex to be fully
grasped by the human mind, that is not evidence that consciousness
resides in a supernatural realm. In fact, though the question of how
consciousness arises remains a puzzle, we have plenty of evidence that
consciousness functions according to physical law. For example, in
neuroscience experiments, thoughts, feelings, and sensations in sub-
jects’ minds— the desire to move an arm, the thought of a specific
person like Jennifer Aniston or Mother Teresa, and the craving for a
Snickers bar— have all been traced to specific areas and activities in
the physical brain. Scientists have even uncovered what they call “con-
cept cells,” which fire whenever a subject recognizes a concept, such
as a specific person, place, or object. These neurons are the cellular
substrate of an idea. They will fire, say, each time a person recognizes
Mother Teresa in a photo, no matter what her dress or pose. They will
even fire if the subject merely sees her name spelled out in text.
Science can answer the seemingly intractable question of how the
universe came into being, and there is reason to believe that science
will eventually be able to explain the origins of consciousness, too.
Science is an ever-advancing process, and the end is not in sight. If
at some future date we are able to explain the mind in terms of the
activity of a universe of neurons, if all our mental processes do prove
to have their source in the flow of charged ions within nerve cells, that
would not mean that science denies the worth of “love, trust, faith,
beauty, awe, wonder, compassion, truth, the arts, morality, and the
mind itself.” To explain something is not, as I have said, to diminish
or deny its worth. It is also important to recognize that even if we
consider a scientific explanation of our thought processes (or anything
else) aesthetically or spiritually unsatisfying or unpalatable, that does
not make it false. Our explanations must be guided by truth; truth
cannot be adjusted to conform to what we want to hear.

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18 THE WAR
Unfortunately, the current absence of a fully developed scientific

theory of consciousness invites just the type of imprecise reasoning
that leads to conclusions that conflict with known physical laws. Phi-
losophy and metaphysics cannot explain an MRI machine, a tele-
vision, or even a toaster. Can they explain consciousness, or why the
universe is as we find it? Maybe, but as Deepak offers his explanations
of a universal consciousness, I plan to hold to an important principle
of science, skepticism. Deepak tells me that in our discussion he is the
underdog. The data show otherwise. According to random samples,
only 45 percent of the American public believes in evolution, but
76 percent believes in miracles. No presidential candidate can be cred-
ible without proclaiming a belief in some higher power, but many
have found it politically advantageous to deny the theory of evolution.
Science is not the lord of modern life Deepak imagines, but its under-
appreciated servant.
The answers of science don’t come easily. Nobel Prize–winning
physicist Steven Weinberg has dedicated his life to the tireless study of
the theory of elementary particles, such as the electron, the muon, and
the quark. Yet he wrote that he has never found those particles very
interesting. Why then has he devoted his life to understanding them?
Because he believes that at this moment in the history of human
thought, their study offers the most promising way to achieve insight
into the fundamental laws that govern all of nature. Some of the ten
thousand scientists who worked, many for over a decade, to build the
Large Hadron Collider, the multibillion-dollar particle accelerator in
Geneva, probably didn’t think the long hours of calibrating delicate
instruments and fine-tuning spectrometers was all that fascinating
either (though many certainly did!). They did it for the same reason
Weinberg studied muons. Humans are unlike other animals in the
questions they ask about their environment. When dropped into new
surroundings, a rat will explore for a while, form a mental map, get
safe, then stop probing. But a person will ask, Why am I in this cage?
How did I get here? Where’s the nearest decent coffee? Humans study
science because we have an urge to know how our lives fit into the

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Perspectives 19
greater scheme of the universe. That’s one of the defining qualities

of what makes us human. But the answers are only edifying if they
are true. So to you, the reader, I would suggest that as you ponder
Deepak’s often very appealing worldview, you keep in mind the words
of the iconic Caltech physicist Richard Feynman: the first principle is
that you must not fool yourself— and you are the easiest to fool.

Chop_9780307886880_5p_01_r1.c.indd 19 7/26/11 1:06 PM

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the California Institute of Technology, and the audience was com-

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Who looks outside, dreams; who looks within, awakens.

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It was this tremendous promise that religion failed to deliver on.

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environment, replacing fossil fuels, curing AIDS and cancer, and

1. There is an unseen reality that is the source of all visible things.

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aware of your mood, the sensations in your body, perhaps a hidden

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consistent with the most advanced scientific theories. Human con-

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result of natural laws rigorously operating through cause and effect,

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The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the

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primates, and even in lower animals. But orangutans cannot reason

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detect with instruments, or measure with numbers. He contrasts the

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the science community, cries of closed-mindedness often emerge. But

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knowledge of ourselves proceeds at a relative crawl. Is that a sign that

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Unfortunately, the current absence of a fully developed scientific

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